


The Human Touch

by TheFierceBeast



Series: The Human Touch [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addict Crowley, Awkward Blow Jobs, Blood Addiction, Blow Jobs, Canon Divergence, Castiel is more perceptive than he's given credit for, Crowley and Feelings, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Gas-N-Sip, Human Castiel, M/M, Mild Angst, Season/Series 09, it's totally going to be OK, look at their fucking love connection, that escalated quickly, there are a lot of blow job tags on Ao3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-28
Packaged: 2018-04-23 21:10:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4892362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFierceBeast/pseuds/TheFierceBeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon divergence – Set around S09E06 ‘Heaven Can’t Wait’ – when Crowley is released from his collar in S09E04, instead of being re-secured, he escapes before they can lock him back up again. Having found out during his time in the bunker that Cas is now human, he goes to find him (burgeoning secret human blood addiction and all).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Human Touch

His senses are probably still better than most true humans, but they're evidently waning: he starts in surprise at the figure suddenly standing before him. Crowley looks around the dusty little room, taking in the shelves of boxed stock, the bare lightbulb, the sleeping roll on the floor in the corner. He says, “Hello Cas. Did you miss me?”

“You.” So much conveyed in one word. Shock, apprehension, vitriol, wonder. Castiel narrows his eyes and for a moment Crowley wonders if he’s been mistaken in his eavesdropping, if there isn’t a spark in the dim bulb yet. But of course there isn’t. As Crowley takes a step forward, he takes a wary step back. So unlike him. Crowley’s not sure he likes it at all: it makes him feel… self-conscious.

“In the very flesh.” He affects a neat little bow.

“How did you get away from Dean and Sam?”

“Details, love.”

“How did you _find_ me?”

Crowley mimes a little yawn of boredom, covering his mouth with a hand. “None of your concern. What matters is that I'm here.”

“What do you want, Crowley?” His tone isn’t entirely belligerent. It’s also a little bit scared.

Raising his eyebrows, Crowley pulls a musing face. “Just a little chat.”

“Can we skip to the part where you kill me?” Perhaps not so different, then. Stubborn and fiery as ever, that same staunch expression of weary exasperation stamped across his pretty mug. Crowley barks a short laugh.

“Kill you? Why on earth would I _kill_ you-” leaning forward a little, he pulls an ‘are-you-kidding?’ face, “- _Steve_? I mean, _look_ at you. You're all...” He gestures, at Castiel’s rumpled rugby shirt and pants, his uncombed hair. “I mean,” he raises his eyebrows. It’s not that he’s lost for words – he’s never lost for words – it’s just that there are so many applicable in this situation. But, as it sums everything up so succinctly, he plumps for, “ _mortal_.” The word emerges like he’s spitting out a turd and Castiel fixes him with a baleful glare that wouldn’t be out of place on a grounded high school girl. Crowley continues, “Wouldn't be very sporting of me to crush you, now, would it? You, weak as a day-old duckling - _some_ of us have integrity.” He leans against a shelving unit and crosses one ankle over the other, casting a pointed glance.

What Castiel says is, “That's very gentlemanly of you.” But what reaches Crowley’s ears is ‘go fuck yourself with a cactus’ and it’s both delightful and alarming that he seems to have grasped the art of sarcasm so recently and adeptly.

“Oh-oh, you really _have_ changed. This is fascinating.”

“Get to the point, Crowley.” The little insect actually turns his back, then, fussing with something at the far end of the room, and from the noises he’s making Crowley realises with a stab of annoyance and maybe something else that he’s brushing his teeth, as if Crowley isn’t even there. Crowley clears his throat. He inspects his manicured nails.

“What's your rush? We're overdue a catch up.”

“I have to be somewhere.”

“What can be so very pressing that-”

“I have to go to work.” Castiel punctuates his interruption by spitting very loudly into the sink. Crowley can see from here, the bottom of the bowl scabbed with divots where people have stubbed out cigarettes and it’s melted the ceramic.

It’s all just too bloody tragic. “I'm... Excuse me a moment, I'm sorry.” He really wants Castiel to look back at him so that he can see Cas’s facial expression, but this is fine too.

“I'm not laughing at you, I'm just laughing at your situation.”

“You're just leaving.”

Really, he’s so ineffectual that Crowley can’t even be angry at his tone. “I'm leaving when I say I am. You're a terrible host, love. All I want is the answer to one little question.”

“I'm not making any deals.” Wary, now. Crowley gathers himself, forces himself to sober up, because this is serious and he’s here for a reason after all.

“Of course not. I wouldn't dream of it. Brand new soul,” _Brand, shiny, new soul –_ Castiel’s _soul – oh my, made to make your mouth water,_ “you want to hold onto it for a while, of course you do. Just one little regular question.”

“I'm waiting.” Castiel turns around, drying his hands. He holds the towel up, chest height, like a shield or a bullfighter’s cape. 

Crowley says, “How does it feel?” and it comes out far more earnestly than he intended.

“How does what feel?”

“Humanity, Castiel.” He swallows a sudden thickness in his throat, a coppery tightness. “How does it _taste_?” He knows, of course. He remembers. He _revisits_. It was so long ago, and so much has passed since, but the memories resurface with every hit of human blood, more vivid than anything since, as if they are in colour and Hell is just a cartoon nightmare palette of monochrome and red. He’s not sure why it’s so important he asks this, whether he wants to know how a former angel would word it, or feel it, or just how it feels for Cas… compared to _him_.

“It-” He opens his mouth as if to speak and Crowley feels himself lean fractionally in, can see it tumble across Cas’s face, every damn emotion, as clearly as if he’d already told his story. It’s like a physical blow. Castiel stops, takes a deep breath. Crowley _sees_ his expression harden – as much as he’s obviously dying to spill, he clams tight, those full lips pursed angrily. “You said yourself. I just got this soul. I'm not baring it to _you_.”

Crowley stands up straight. He wrinkles his nose, brushing away a line of grey dust that’s transferred from the shelving to his coat sleeve. “You even talk like one of them now. It's pitiful.” He stares, direct, at the man before him. “What else have you picked up? Those scars on your knuckles...” Castiel glances down at his hands, twisted up in the towel, as if he can’t help himself. “Any others, hmm? I do hope you’ve been _careful_.” He raises an eyebrow.

Castiel lowers his, frowning. “I will not facilitate your gloating.”

“I can make you, you know.”

“ _Try_.” There’s a sharp glint of reflected light. Castiel moves quickly with the blade, but it takes only a wave of Crowley’s hand to freeze him, arm murderously raised. He clicks his tongue, thrusts his hands into his pockets. Paces an unhurried circle around his motionless captive.

“Well I have to say, I'm impressed at your spunk, angel... Oh, I can't call you that now, can I?” Gently, he prises the angel blade from Castiel’s locked fingers and lays it on the draining board next to the sink. He looks into his glowering eyes. Caresses his cheek with the back of a hand, one finger trailing down over the bump of his Adams apple, to where the dip of his collar bone disappears beneath the collar of his white t-shirt. A click of Crowley’s fingers unfreezes him, panting and furious, and he grabs Crowley around the wrist then just as abruptly lets him go, stumbling backwards as if the touch burned. Crowley sucks in his bottom lip. To see his former partner-buddy-nemesis like this is oddly conflicting. Part of him is jubilant he’s somehow not the one who’s come off the worst from the whole tablets debacle. Another part of him... “My hunch is, you're dying to tell someone who'll understand how all this mess feels. Squirrel doesn't really get it, does he, pet?” He pauses. “Actually where _is_ Captain Flannel lately?”

Castiel sounds like he’s chewing broken glass. “I don't know.”

“Oh... Is that a nerve I've struck? Did you two break up?”

“We were not dating.” Crowley can practically hear the fool’s teeth gritting.

“So who've you been hanging with these past few months?” It hits him, like a swung scythe. “You're on your own aren't you? You're completely on your own.” 

Castiel looks away. “Kill me or leave.”

“Cas. I'm not gloating.” Suddenly, he really isn’t, and that sort of sideswipes him. Castiel looks back at him, miserable, and this isn’t at all how Crowley had imagined this going. He really does feel sorry for the moron. His voice is strangely gentle when he says, “We’re on the same page here. I no more want a world full of hacked-off harp-jockeys than you want to be here. The sooner we get the sodding lot of you back upstairs, the better.”

“It's not been all bad,” Castiel says, in a voice that suggests it’s as bad as it can possibly be.

Crowley nods at the make-do bed, the ugly uniform and single mug. “It looks bad.”

“It's… strange. But there are lessons to be learned.”

“Such as?”

Crowley swallows, again, around that damned tightness in his throat and Castiel fixes him with a look so candid that the back of his neck crawls. “Such as, what fools we have been.”

“Speak for yourself, Don Quixote.”

His voice is soft. “What fools we still are. Only now I’ve…”

“Lost everything?”

“Perhaps.” He huffs a humourless little laugh. “Yes. I’m weak. I have no power. It is… humbling. Finally I understand. I understand why the human race are my Father’s favourites.” When he looks up, his eyes are still the same blue, so bright that again Crowley half expects them to glow. There’s still a light in them, a wet brightness that he can place but really doesn’t want to. “Crowley, you have no idea. I was so blind, I was so full of pride. I thought I knew what was best for humanity, when I knew nothing about them at all. To experience it, first-hand: the chaos, the fear, the elation-”

“The whiskey?”

“Is that all you think about?” Damn him if he’s not trying to hold in a smile.

“Daytime TV? Bacon butties? Sex?” Castiel shakes his head. “Love?” Crowley asks, quietly. Castiel cocks his head, that old familiar gesture. He stares, as if he’s curious, and it makes Crowley’s face feel warm.

“Everything is... Muddied. Complicated. Overwhelming. But... beautiful.”

“Tell me.” Crowley sounds… hungry. Even to his own ears. “Everything.”

“I can't. It defies description.”

“ _Try_.”

“I can’t. I-” he shakes his head. “I should hate you. But I can't. I can’t hate you. _That_ is humanity.”

Crowley feels like he wants to hold his breath. Instead, he says, casually, “Then tell me something else. When you were,” he makes a little circular gesture with one hand, “on top of your game. Before all that business with the Leviathans melting that delightful vessel of yours and all. You weren’t human then.” He doesn’t mean it to, but his voice lowers,

“Why did you let me go?”

“I don’t know.”

“See, I think you’re telling me fibs.” Castiel narrows his eyes. It’s like even now he’s looking into Crowley’s very being. “You're trying my patience. I could hurt you.”

“But you won't.”

“I won’t? _I won’t?_ ” It’s not Castiel he’s yelling at and Crowley knows it. “The Scribe of God has clipped your wings! You're _disgusting_ , you're _nothing_ \- he _neutered_ you for godssake!”

That same curious look is still in Cas’s eyes. “Why do you care? Isn't this what you wanted?”

“This isn't what's meant for you.” Good lord, but he means that. “You were a bloody _warrior_! You should go down singing, in white fire, in glorious battle.” His voice lowers, but he doesn’t feel calmer. Far from it. “I don't like people breaking my toys. Only I’m allowed to do that.”

Human or not, he can feel the damn creature’s eyes on him, his gaze a weight, hot and concentrated as a search light. Something is dawning in Castiel’s voice when he says it: “That’s why you care. You _care_. That’s it, isn’t it? You. Care.” Crowley can’t look at him now. He’s afraid of what this insignificant ape might see in his face, of what realisation he might see on Castiel’s. Cas says, “I want to do something I couldn't do without humanity,” and then Crowley does look, in surprise, at the movement in front of him.

“On your knees before your enemy?” Dear sin, if he’s not practically choking on these revolting human emotions. The fool looks up at him, wide-eyed, but he doesn’t look beaten and he doesn’t look unsure.

“No.”

His gaze is steady. Expectant. Crowley’s hands wander, wonderingly, into his hair. “No?”

“There is no reason for us to be enemies now.”

It's hands-down the worst blow job that Crowley has ever received, but he's never been so turned on in all his centuries. His hands only slightly urge the man’s face towards his crotch, but Cas takes the cue, or perhaps it’s Crowley who’s taken _his_ cue, as he leans his cheek against the fly of Crowley’s suit pants, rubs against him like a damned cat, and Crowley is already helplessly, obviously, _mortally_ horny, his hard-on tenting the fabric and spoiling the line of his trousers. Then Cas’s hands are up, fumbling at his waistband and dragging down his zip, pulling his underwear clumsily, just enough to free his dick. He dives right in without any preamble, of course he does, and Crowley lets slip an undignified, loud groan, hips bucking with none of his usual measure of control as Cas bobs like a damn nodding dog, clutching onto Crowley’s thighs. And he’s sloppy and noisy and lacking any rhythm, stopping repeatedly at just the wrong point to gasp in breath but so earnest and enthusiastic it fairly rings round the empty cavern where Crowley’s heart should be like the echo of the first love song of youth. Just seeing that serious, sulky mouth wrapped wetly around his ten inches, knowing he’s surely, without a shadow of a doubt the first, the only… Crowley’s hands fist in thin air: he wants to grab Cas’s hair, to force him into place, but he braces them against the wall behind instead as his hips jerk, the cresting wave inside breaking, breaking, and Castiel is holding his hips and swallowing with such sweet, dogged determination… Crowley moans, long, letting his head thud back against the concrete wall, until he’s spent. And Cas keeps lapping at him for a little longer than is comfortable, as he softens, over-sensitive, but it’s OK, it’s fine, it’s great… his fingers find Castiel’s hair again, winding tenderly and when he looks down finally, Cas has his head resting again against Crowley’s thigh and his eyes are wide and wondering and dazed. Crowley coughs, and tucks himself away, zipping up hurriedly, as Castiel stands, his knees giving a very human and very wince-inducing crack. “What about you?” Crowley nods a little awkwardly at the prominent bulge in Castiel’s dreadful cotton-blend slacks and Cas looks down with an expression like he’s just noticed and what the hell is _that_? “No reach around? I mean, it's just common courtesy…”

“I have to go to work.” He sounds apologetic. One might almost say, regretful. “I'll get fired.”

Crowley feels, inexplicably, disappointed. “Give you a lift? I mean,” he clears his throat, “Least I can do.”

“Thank you. But that won’t be necessary. It’s, ah-” He gestures, sheepishly, at the stock-room door. Crowley raises his eyebrows, nods, and wonders why he’s trying to look understanding. Castiel runs a hand through his mussed hair. “You can visit. If you like. We can talk about it.” He clears his throat. “I mean – will I see you again? Now that we are both-”

He doesn’t wait for him to say it. Crowley disappears.  


 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why I have my own personal head canon that Cas would be terrible yet enthusiastic in bed at first and I have no idea why it delights me so much but there it stands.
> 
> I’m quite sad that they don’t canonically get to spend time together when they’re both ‘human’ – if Crowley gets that high and human off regular human blood (not saying Sam’s is exactly regular, but even so) then what would human-angel blood do to him? Might have to revisit this one!


End file.
